F E A T U R E
representing a significant and ongoing source of wasted energy. Identifying and decommissioning these underutilised servers is now a key priority in sustainable data centre management.
This under-utilisation leads to significant resource wastage and directly contributes to greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, it remains invisible to most organisations due to siloed data and limited operational awareness. Simply put, these under-utilised servers approximately equate to every second server not needing to be produced and installed to begin with. Significant environmental gains as well as cost savings can be achieved by reducing the number of servers in production and utilising older, cheaper hardware to maintain existing systems. As data centres continue to grow and usage increases, ignoring the problem is simply unsustainable.
Another long-standing concern is the amount of CO₂ emissions caused by hardware production and underutilisation, rather than energy consumption. Studies show that embodied emissions from the production and disposal of IT hardware can account for more than half of total lifecycle emissions – making sustained use
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